UK Government to close care worker visa for overseas recruitment, says Cooper
The UK Government is going to close the care worker visa for overseas recruitment as part of its immigration reforms, the Home Secretary has said.
Yvette Cooper said rules around the visa will be changed to “prevent” it being used to “recruit from abroad”, but that companies will still be able to recruit from a pool of thousands of people who came to the UK on care visas for jobs that did not exist.
Ministers are due to publish their Immigration White Paper on Monday which will also include changes to skilled visa thresholds and tighter restrictions on recruitment for jobs on skills shortages.
Officials are looking to bring down net migration, which reached 728,000 in 2024, but ministers are not going to set an overall target, which Ms Cooper labelled as a “failed approach”.
‘New restrictions’
The Home Secretary told Sky News on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that ministers are going to “introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers” because “what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK”.
“We will be closing the care worker visa for overseas recruitment,” she added.
Under current rules, to qualify for a care worker visa a person must have a certificate of sponsorship from their employer with information about the role they have been offered in the UK.
The Home Secretary told the BBC the rules around the system will change to “prevent” it being used “to recruit from abroad” but “we will allow them to continue to extend visas and also to recruit from more than 10,000 people who came on a care worker visa, where the sponsorship visa was cancelled”.
“Effectively they came to jobs that weren’t actually here or that were not of a proper standard,” she added.
“Care companies should be recruiting from that pool of people, rather than recruiting from abroad, we are closing recruitment from abroad,” Ms Cooper said.
“We’re doing it alongside saying we need to being in a new fair pay agreement for care workers,” she added.
Reduction
She told the BBC programme that she expects the changes to skilled worker visas combined with changes to the care visa which “will come in in the course of this year” will lead to a “reduction of up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas over the course of the next year”.
However, she declined to put a number on the overall net migration target, telling Sky News it left previous governments with “broken promises”.
“We’re not going to take that really failed approach, because I think what we need to do is rebuild credibility and trust in the whole system,” she added.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said he would support the changes to care worker visas, but the 50,000 “tweak” is “not enough”.
“We would go further and tomorrow we intend to push to a vote in Parliament a measure that would have an annual cap on migration voted for and set by Parliament to restore proper democratic accountability, because those numbers were far, far too high,” he said.
Skills shortages
According to the Home Office, with the White Paper there will be tighter restrictions on recruitment for jobs with skills shortages, businesses will be supported to take on more British workers and employers will be told to develop plans to train staff in the UK.
In an attempt to reduce the number of low-skilled workers coming to Britain, the skilled visa threshold will be increased to graduate-level.
Officials will also set up a labour market evidence group to examine which sectors are reliant on overseas workers.
The department have also said there will be reforms to deportation and removal rules. Under the proposals, the Home Office will be informed of all foreign nationals convicted of offences and officials say it will make it easier to remove people who commit offences.
The Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to “step up” and pay care workers “properly”.
The party’s health and social care spokeswoman Helen Morgan said: “Labour must step up and take proper action to address recruitment shortages including paying our care workers properly and rolling out a plan for career progression.
“This action must be taken without delay to ensure patients can receive the high quality care they need.”
The white paper comes less than a fortnight after Reform UK took control of 10 councils in England in the local elections.
Nigel Farage’s party also beat Labour to victory in the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election.
Deputy leader Richard Tice told Sky News on Sunday that the party’s strong performance in the local elections was “because people are raging, furious, about the levels of both legal and illegal immigration”
Industry and union attack plans to ban overseas care worker recruitment
Care England has labelled the change a ‘crushing blow to an already fragile sector’.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper appearing on the BBC 1 current affairs programme, Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg (BBC/PA)
Plans to end overseas recruitment for care workers have been labelled as “cruel” and ministers told the sector would have “collapsed long ago” without foreign staff.
The Government has been urged to “reassure overseas workers they’ll be allowed to stay” after Yvette Cooper announced that recruitment from abroad would be closed.
Care England has labelled the change a “crushing blow to an already fragile sector”, while Unison has said that “hostile language” has seen applications for care visas “fall off a cliff”.
Martin Green, Care England’s chief executive accused the Government of “kicking us while we’re already down”.
“For years, the sector has been propping itself up with dwindling resources, rising costs, and mounting vacancies,” he said.
“International recruitment wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was a lifeline. Taking it away now, with no warning, no funding, and no alternative, is not just short-sighted – it’s cruel.”
According to figures released in January 2025, applications to come to the UK on a health and care worker visa fell sharply last year.
Overall there were 63,800 applications between April and December 2024, compared to 299,800 a year earlier.
A ban on overseas care workers bringing family dependants with them to the UK came into force in 2024.
Applications to come to the UK on a health and care worker visa fell sharply last year, according to figures released in January (Jeff Moore/PA)
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Christina McAnea, general secretary of the Unison union said that the “NHS and the care sector would have collapsed long ago without the thousands of workers who’ve come to the UK from overseas”.
“Migrant health and care staff already here will now be understandably anxious about what’s to happen to them. The Government must reassure these overseas workers they’ll be allowed to stay and continue with their indispensable work,” she added.
She also called on the Government to “stop describing care jobs as low skilled” and “get on with making its fair pay agreement a reality”.
The Independent Care Group told the Government it has got it “badly wrong”.
Chairman Mike Padgham said that “we do try to recruit staff from this country, but we simply haven’t been able to get the numbers we need”.
“There are currently around 130,000 vacancies in social care. Overseas recruitment brought in around 185,000 much-needed workers. ”
Ms Cooper said rules around care visas will be changed to “prevent” them being used to “recruit from abroad”, but that companies will still be able to recruit from a pool of thousands of people who came to the UK on care visas for jobs that did not exist.
The Home Secretary told Sky News on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that ministers are going to “introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers” because “what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK”.
“We will be closing the care worker visa for overseas recruitment,” she added.
Under current rules, to qualify for a care worker visa a person must have a certificate of sponsorship from their employer with information about the role they have been offered in the UK.
Restricting staffing during shortage has the care sector worried
Like in the NHS, there is a chronic shortage of carers, with an estimated 70,000 domestic care workers leaving the sector over the last two years.
Nick Martin
People and politics correspondent @NickMartinSKY
Sunday 11 May 2025
"A crushing blow" is how Care England described government plans to scrap the social care visa scheme, which allows carers from abroad to work in the UK.
It is a move which care providers say makes the crisis in social care even worse.
Read more: Care homes face ban on overseas recruitment
The government admits that social care is on its knees. But that's nothing new.
For decades, social care has creaked under the pressure of an ageing population.
Restricting staffing during a staffing crisis has a lot of care providers worried.
They say they struggle to recruit from within the UK and have become more and more reliant on foreign workers.
More on Social Care
Care providers warn system is 'at breaking point'
Like in the NHS, there is a chronic shortage of carers, with an estimated 70,000 domestic care workers leaving the sector over the last two years.
But this is not the first time that changes to immigration rules have impacted the care sector.
Minister reveals new immigration plans
The home secretary says new plans to tackle immigration will see 50,000 fewer visas issued this year alone.
In 2023, changes led to a dramatic 70% fall in international recruitment in just three months.
Providers say that without access to international workers, there is a real risk of significant workforce shortages.
That means that providers cannot meet this growing demand for care, which undermines the quality of care for thousands of people across the UK.
Political analysis: Policy may assuage voters' concerns - but risks harming struggling care sector
Skills for Care, the organisation that monitors the workforce in the sector, estimates that an additional 540,000 care workers will be needed by 2040 to meet population needs.
This raises critical questions about where these workers will come from if neither the funding nor the migration route exists.
Caught in the middle: the old and vulnerable.
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